I've previously been waxing lyrical about approaches for measurement of social media, yet the simplest discussion around social media within the agency world still does not seem to have been cracked. The point I think is vital to understand is that consumers, businesses choose. They choose who is an influencer. They choose who to trust. They choose what to believe. They choose what is right for their needs. The traditional advertising approach of push push (and occasionally influence) is driven to create a relationship - in that respect for users who still trust a brand that's great news - unfortunately all data points to a mass majority who simply don't trust advertising.

Yes there are exceptions. But they are rare, and dare I say it - lucky most of the time.

In this world, where advertising messages are being disintermediated by your customers, the best you can hope to achieve (despite your high GRP's, happy aided awareness scores, pdf downloads and engagement metrics on your website ['user sees more than one page']) is something I like to think of as marketing intertia. In other words, advertise or not you will sell products. Why? Because the chief reason people buy your products is not because of a wonderful tagline, or by watching a video on youtube - it's because they talk about it.

Something which I discovered this week, was a presentation loaded to slideshare.net called "I am the media", created by Alain Thys of Futurelab and presented at the Nov 29 Marketing3 conference at Media Plaza in the Netherlands. This is a wonderfully articulatated presentation on this same subject, which I'd like to share:

This is a subject that's not going to go away - but I hope to start the debate here.

What do you think? These comments are wide, over-arching and sometimes controversial - old media is not dead? Comments are welcome!